The Sad, Slow Death of Jon Koppenhaver

Any moral or ethical objections to the industry aside, you have to
give it to the pornography industry in one respect: they take in
everybody. Give them your tired, your drug-addled, your
daddy-issued, your clinically psychotic…there’s a job for everyone.
Some more pleasant than others.

So what does it say about War Machine
-- birth name Jon Koppenhaver -- that he’s not likely to be
welcomed back in hedonism central? Koppenhaver, who sports a
not-bad 10-3 record and was infamous for ill-thought-out rants on
his Internet profiles, is
currently wanted by Metro police in Nevada for allegedly
“beating and choking” his girlfriend. This may or may not coincide
with an incident over the weekend in which he is said to have
assaulted a number of individuals at an adult industry-centric
birthday party in California.

Metro considers him “armed and dangerous.” I would consider
adopting whatever protocol is used for the escape of a zoo animal,
up to and including tranquilizers and raw meat lures.

This is all morbidly fascinating, and I’m not going to pretend the
campfire-story appeal isn’t interesting, but Koppenhaver lacks the
celebrity for it to amuse people for very long. In all but that
respect, he reminds me of Ty Cobb, a viciously-tempered baseball
player who once pummeled a handicapped man in the stands of a game
and later stabbed a night watchman. Like War Machine, much of his
life’s philosophy revolved around besting people he believed were
out to get him. Unlike War Machine, he was good enough at his
chosen profession to get away with it.

We’ll see how far he can extend his outlaw persona before authority
puts him in a box. If Koppenhaver is lucky, it’ll be prison. If
he’s not, you can guess.